[WIP] Owl Rock Cave - A Thieves Hideout (Feedback/Testers Wanted)

Recommended Posts

Welcome to Owl Rock. A small falmer cave that had been cleared out and taken over by a band of thieves, turning it into their own hide out. Thanks to the aid of an inside man in the Thieves Guild, they’ve been able to mooch off their jobs and identity and have a good showing for it, thus increasing the Guilds ‘bad luck’. However luck has a way of changing, with the inside man discovered, Owl Rock is at risk of being found, and taken back by the Guild or a lucky adventurer.

Owl Rock is a player home modeled after a thieves Den. Located deep into the eastern mountains by Riften along the path to Last Vigil. While aimed at thieves at heart, it is suitable for all character types. You also don’t need to be part of the Thieves Guild to find or use this den. There are many scattered items, weapons, and gear laying around, some enchanted, most not. They are all tied to the level lists so they will vary based on your players level when you first enter.

An optional quest for immersion and aid in finding the place can be started from a Forgotten Note in Riften lying beside Brynjolf's stall in the market. It'll start you on the task of finding Owl Rock, and clearing out the bandits inside. The clear out part of the quest will also start by finding the cave entrance if the note isn't picked up.

No outside resources were used.

Update:

Added in more bookcases totaling 6 now. Can you find them?

Added in 4 mannequins.

Added a Shrine of Kynareth to the thieves stash.

Features:

Fully Nav Meshed

Named LVed Bandits roaming about, each with their own patrol paths and fighting styles.

A small quest to find the cave and take out the bandits inside.

Ambient sound markers placed around to make it feel more alive.

Skooma.

Three bedrolls to pick and choose from.

A Shrine of Kynareth can be found among the stash of crates and items.

Skooma.

Plenty of safe storage, Book Shelves, Weapon Racks, and displays here and there.

Each crafting station has a chest nearby for item storage and sorting.

Skoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooma.

Note on some Features:

There are many scattered items, weapons, and gear laying around, some enchanted, most not. They are all tied to the level lists so they will vary based on your players level when you first enter, so you may find something useful (but not OP for your lv) with in the thieves hauls.

The bandits are set to despawn after being away from the cave for a day. Any items that remain on their bodies will be transferred to a hidden chest located behind the carts at the entrance. No worry if you forget to loot someone, or if you don't care about the items, just don't mess with the chest.

Mod Support:

Works with Frostfall 3.0 & Realistic Needs & Diseases/INeed.

The torches and camp fire will warm you up.

The water can be drunk from and is 'cool and refreshing' when swam in. Does not make you chilled.

Idle markers scattered around for AFT users and other mods that allow the player or followers to use them.

All scattered items are tied to the loot lists, this allows support for any weapon, armor, potion, and enchant mods that make use of the level lists. Some of the bandits items are also tied to these lists.

What I’d like tested/help with:

General look and feel of the place. Any holes I missed? Getting stuck on something?

Any lighting issues? Is it too dark? Too light? I don't want it bright, but also don't want it too dark to see.

How well followers can move about, any Nav mesh issues? Anyone getting stuck?

Known Issues:

The bookcase beside the alchemy lab when used, the books can be taken back out without going through the bookcase. Tried fixing this a number of ways even covering the whole front with the trigger but nothing has worked. Seems to ignore the collision box. The other bookcases all works fine.

If the bandits despawn with items still on their person the chest the items go to gets changed to a stolen tag even with the cell and chest being marked as player owned. Trying to find a way to fix this so I can link their items to random chests around the den vs a single one.

All NPC's should despawn once you are away from the cave for a full day. However it seems some like to linger longer than others. Leave the area and wait another day and they should all be poofed by then. Or just throw them in the water or dump them by the carts... whatever works for you.

Thing's that will not be added so please don't ask for them:

Workbench/Forge/Smelter. The idea of the crafting stations already added are stuff I can see thieves being able to haul into the place. I don't see them lugging in or making a forge, or dragging in a heavy workbench or a smelter. These things (apart from smelter) can be found in Riften if needed.

The rest of the Shrines. The one added is fitting for the theme of the place giving a stm buff for a boost in carry weight, and is mainly there to aid with curing any diseases you may have gotten. Least you got one, I was planning to not have any!

This is a slightly edited version. Mainly I added in some removeable wall torches to some of the darker spots, a LWing tanning rack by the ladder leading up the alch area, and added in two large weapon display cases and a few more weapon racks and one more plaque.

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

So I did some research and finally found a topic that brought up that an object can only have 4 lights shining on it, even if its a light in another room 'leaking' onto it.. it also don't have to be directly on the object. If the light's range can touch any bit of an objects hit box, it counts.

Due to the way the bits of my cave are set up.. well.. just say trying to fix the lights was a pain. I had to shift a few around, and remove a lot. The downside is now I have a lot of dark spots that I can't light up less I want the flickering.This means I also had to remove the 'outside' lights that were lighting the rocks that you can see outside the little peep hole by the alch station.. as they were leaking light onto other objects.. and thus.. going over the magic number -.-

This is just a bit of an annoyance... I can't even boost the size of the lights to cover the dark spots as that also can tip the magic number over. ugh!

Also just fixed one of the display cases that some how had every trigger unlinked when it was linked before. O.o as well as the chairs around the camp fire, some how I pulled the wrong 'common' chair and it didn't let you sit in em.

CK view. dark spots ahoy!

Edited December 7, 2015 by IronBlockGames

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

I count 11 lights in your cave; it's a lot too much. Whatever they say on that page you found, a cell mustn't count more than 4 lights that cast shadows, it can count more no shadows lights. A good way for you to know if your cave is "balanced" is to open the preferences in the ck, go to the "shader" tab and check "# of lights". If your cave turns red, there are too many lights. See ck basics lesson 4.

My Whitewater Farm house counts 8 lights, 4 being shadow lights, and it seems that lights overlapping each other isn't the problem since, except for one at the bottom right of the image, they all overlap each other. I cannot add any light without having the shaders turning bright red.

Edited January 16, 2016 by ladyonthemoon

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

Well if I don't have any lights the whole place is dark as a bugger. The big issue is the bits that make up the room are big and the hitbox creeps into other areas, so lights in a total diff section can hit it, and add to the light count hitting the object.

Also the light ref I mean is if there are more than 4 lights in general (well really it seems to be a max of 5-6), not just shadow lights, hitting an object, it makes it go red in the shaders view, and causes the light flicker effect, even if in game the object or area is in darkness.

As you can see at the moment nothing is in the red, though there are two chunks that are close

There's one of the objects and as you can see thanks to it's freaking huge size, it has 6 lights smacking it. One more and it goes red and causes the light to flicker.

My issue is I can't really remove the lights much more less I want even more areas to be dumped into darkness. As is even though that one chunk is shown to be lit up, A good part of it is in total darkness..

It's an annoying issue thanks to the hitbox's being so darn huge on some of these bits. As is I had to shift one light in the entrance hall to the other side of the hallway just to creep its light range away from hitting the very corner of the chunk on the right and making it go red.

As is sense I can't seem for the life of me to get the dust beams to show up from the hole by the alch station, that may be the only extra light that'll be removed., but it wont really help these areas. I mean look at that, even that light on the table there is touching the corner of the hitbox, and is being freaking counted. >.<

So I am still trying to size/shift some lights, but I can't really find means to do it that don't make most of area in darkness.. I mean come on.. you have a table with a map.. you'd have a light there so you can see it..

Share this post

Link to post

Share on other sites

I just spent the last 4 hours doing a big overhaul to a few of the areas. Rear ranging objects, re-designing thing's.. redoing a tun of navmesh... as well as shifting ALL the walls as some how my snap to grid wanted to go 'I don't like that grid, Ima snap to another grid!" found out only after I started the moving and touching a few walls thus shifting them out of their old alignment.. @.x Download's been updated again with the changes.

Anyho.. the lighting should be fixed.. I even said screw it and removed the light that was to be a beam shining from a hole in the alch area.. but nothing I did would make it a visible beam, the only hint a light was there was on the ground, no beam, the bust beam wasn't even visible. -.- So bah! What I get for trying to do nice lighting effects...

All that should be needed now is to sort out how to get bandits to despawn, and the note linked to a 'go here' quest to aid with locating the place when the map marker is turned off.